24,872 research outputs found
Maximising women's potential in the UK's retail sector
Purpose â A defining characteristic of the UK retail sector is the high number of women it employs but there remains an enduring under-representation of women in its management positions. The majority of women in the industry work part-time and this paper explores the factors that impact upon the career progression. Approach â One thousand questionnaires were completed by store staff in three leading retailers supported by interviews with store staff and SME retailers in the UKâs East Midlands region. Findings â The study revealed continuing barriers to career progression for women working part-time in retailing. Despite family friendly employment policies becoming an increasingly important feature of modern work organisations, career progression was informed by a traditional concept of a career based on full-time working. Research Limitations - the study was limited to one sector, there is a need for further studies into womenâs career progression in other sectors reliant on female employment. Practical implications - the findings have implications for promotion policies, training and development provision and line management practices if retailers are to maximise the potential of the women they employ. Originality/Value â The findings, based on both quantitative and qualitative data, suggest that retailing is an industry where a significant number of women are working below their potential despite organisational policies supportive of diversity and equality of opportunity
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Female career progression in retailing
Abstract: Purpose â The aim of this paper is to highlight the factors that limit and support female career progression in the retail industry. Design/methodology/approach â The research used a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Data were collected from employees and managers working in 31 stores belonging to national stores operating in the East Midlands as well as ten SME independent retailers based in the region. Findings â The women in this study can be categorised into those women who are not interested in pursuing a career in retail, those that seek promotion but have difficulties balancing the demands of their work and domestic circumstances and those who have actively pursued a career in the industry. Despite these categorisations, the study suggests that the career progression of all female staff is helped and hindered by a number of interrelating factors, such as whether they have a role model, are loyal to the store they work in or have children. Practical implications â It is proposed that career initiatives in retailing need to be more adaptable so that they take account of the different development needs of these three types of women. Originality/value â This is a large-scale study that uses a mixed method approach and considers the opinions of store staff working in a range of roles
Flight-test measurement of the noise reduction of a jet transport delayed flap approach procedure
A delayed flap approach procedure was flight tested using the NASA CV-990 airplane to measure and analyze the noise produced beneath the flight path. Three other types of landing approaches were also flight tested to provide a comparison of the noise reduction benefits to the delayed flap approach. The conventional type of approach was used as a baseline to compare the effectiveness of the other approaches. The decelerating approach is a variation of the delayed flap approach. A detailed comparison of the ground perceived noise generated during the approaches is presented. For this comparison, the measured noise data were normalized to compensate for variations in aircraft weight and winds that occurred during the flight tests. The data show that the reduced flap approach offers some noise reduction, while the delayed flap and decelerating approaches offer significant noise reductions over the conventional approach
Novel insertional presenilin 1 mutation causing Alzheimer disease with spastic paraparesis.
Journal ArticleA four-generation pedigree exhibiting early-onset autosomal dominant Alzheimer disease (AD) with spastic paraplegia, dystonia, and dysarthria due to a novel 6-nucleotide insertional mutation in exon 3 of the presenilin 1 gene (PS1) is described. Serial examinations, PET scans, and autopsy revealed that the mutation in this highly conserved portion of PS1 causes an aggressive dementia that maintains the usual regional hierarchy of disease pathology while extending abnormalities into more widespread brain areas than typically seen in AD
Determination of Frequency and Distribution of Hessian Fly (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae) Biotypes in the Northeastern Soft Wheat Region
Fifteen collections of Hessian flies from the northern soft winter wheat region of the United States were used to determine the composition and frequency of biotypes. The wheat cultivars \u27Seneca\u27 (H7Hs), \u27Monon\u27 (H3), \u27Knox 62\u27 (~, H7Hg), and \u27Abe\u27 (Hs) were used as differentials. Biotypes J and L replaced biotype B as the prevalent biotype in Indiana, since wheat cultivars having the Hs and the H6 genes have been grown. Biotype GP, the least virulent of any Hessian fly biotypes, was still present in New York indicating that wheat cuItivars with no genes for resistance are still being grown there. The genetic variability of Hessian fly biotypes that enables them to overcome the resistance in wheat cultivars is discussed
The Adsorption and Collapse Transitions in a Linear Polymer Chain near an Attractive Wall
We deduce the qualitative phase diagram of a long flexible neutral polymer
chain immersed in a poor solvent near an attracting surface using
phenomenological arguments. The actual positions of the phase boundaries are
estimated numerically from series expansion up to 19 sites of a self-attracting
self avoiding walk in three dimensions. In two dimensions, we calculate
analytically phase boundaries in some cases for a partially directed model.
Both the numerical as well as analytical results corroborate the proposed
qualitative phase diagram.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, revte
The competition of hydrogen-like and isotropic interactions on polymer collapse
We investigate a lattice model of polymers where the nearest-neighbour
monomer-monomer interaction strengths differ according to whether the local
configurations have so-called ``hydrogen-like'' formations or not. If the
interaction strengths are all the same then the classical -point
collapse transition occurs on lowering the temperature, and the polymer enters
the isotropic liquid-drop phase known as the collapsed globule. On the other
hand, strongly favouring the hydrogen-like interactions give rise to an
anisotropic folded (solid-like) phase on lowering the temperature. We use Monte
Carlo simulations up to a length of 256 to map out the phase diagram in the
plane of parameters and determine the order of the associated phase
transitions. We discuss the connections to semi-flexible polymers and other
polymer models. Importantly, we demonstrate that for a range of energy
parameters two phase transitions occur on lowering the temperature, the second
being a transition from the globule state to the crystal state. We argue from
our data that this globule-to-crystal transition is continuous in two
dimensions in accord with field-theory arguments concerning Hamiltonian walks,
but is first order in three dimensions
Quantum quench in 1D: Coherent inhomogeneity amplification and 'supersolitons'
We study a quantum quench in a 1D system possessing Luttinger liquid (LL) and
Mott insulating ground states before and after the quench, respectively. We
show that the quench induces power law amplification in time of any particle
density inhomogeneity in the initial LL ground state. The scaling exponent is
set by the fractionalization of the LL quasiparticle number relative to the
insulator. As an illustration, we consider the traveling density waves launched
from an initial localized density bump. While these waves exhibit a particular
rigid shape, their amplitudes grow without bound.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Vortex pairing in two-dimensional Bose gases
Recent experiments on ultracold Bose gases in two dimensions have provided
evidence for the existence of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase
via analysis of the interference between two independent systems. In this work
we study the two-dimensional quantum degenerate Bose gas at finite temperature
using the projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation classical field method. While
this describes the highly occupied modes of the gas below a momentum cutoff, we
have developed a method to incorporate the higher momentum states in our model.
We concentrate on finite-sized homogeneous systems in order to simplify the
analysis of the vortex pairing. We determine the dependence of the condensate
fraction on temperature and compare this to the calculated superfluid fraction.
By measuring the first order correlation function we determine the boundary of
the Bose-Einstein condensate and BKT phases, and find it is consistent with the
superfluid fraction decreasing to zero. We reveal the characteristic unbinding
of vortex pairs above the BKT transition via a coarse-graining procedure.
Finally, we model the procedure used in experiments to infer system
correlations [Hadzibabic et al., Nature 441, 1118 (2006)], and quantify its
level of agreement with directly calculated in situ correlation functions.Comment: published versio
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